During lockdown, in early-mid 2020, the UK has seen a significant increase in the number of domestic abuse related calls to helplines, with some charities reporting over 200% increase at a time when there was over 70% reduction in service delivery as a result of the pandemic. How did the domestic abuse services sector cope with the pandemic? What were the experiences of the frontline workers of the domestic abuse sector? With a range of interviews recorded on Zoom during and at the end the lockdown period, this film offers for the first time, first-hand accounts of keyworkers and key players of the domestic abuse services from their own voices and images. The interviews offer exclusive stories of keyworkers reflecting on their experiences of vicarious trauma, how they worked selflessly while dealing with the implications of the pandemic themselves.
Eylem Atakav and Karoline Pelikan
Music "The Healing" by Sergey Cheremisinov https://band.link/sergeycheremisinov https://www.instagram.com/sscheremisinov
Edited by https://vimeo.com/pelikanpictures
https://www.instagram.com/pelikanpictures Twitter: @pelikanpictures and @eylematakav
Eylem Atakav is Professor of Film, Gender and Public Engagement at the University of East Anglia where she teaches courses on women and Middle Eastern media. She is the author of Women and Turkish Cinema: Gender Politics, Cultural Identity and Representation (2012). She is the director of Growing Up Married (2016) – an internationally acclaimed documentary about forced marriage and child brides in Turkey.
Pelikan, co-director of Lifeline, is an award-winning German-Peruvian documentary filmmaker. The films of her production company Pelikan Pictures focus on social injustice and inequality, films for educational purpose, violence against women and LGBTQI rights. Karoline founded the award-winning empowerment project "EmpoderArte", a series of film workshops for women from disadvantaged regions in Peru.